Cyberpunk 2077: How Do I Love Thee?

I am probably the last person to buy and play Cyberpunk 2077, so I guess this is more of a consideration than a review. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I tend to wait until AAA games are significantly discounted—generally by more than 50%—before I invest in them. A lot of times, that’s made easier by the trash condition in which so many games are released. Cyberpunk 2077 was no exception, with a lot of complaining about bugs and other performance issues when it first came out.

Listen, there are still bugs and performance issues—elevated roadways often disappear as I am driving along them, though they are still there as my vehicle doesn’t fall they just become invisible—but these are few and generally do not impact the play experience.

I’ve got way too many hours on this game and recently returned to it as I am working on a robust tabletop RPG system and one of the playtests is in a cyberpunk environment. This game really helps me get into the right mindspace to work on a cyberpunk setting, so I jumped back into it.

It’s also one of my straight-up favourite games, so that wasn’t a heavy lift.

In trying to understand my love for the game, I think it comes down to three factors—factors that intersect with my love for Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4. Those would be combat mechanics, RP elements, and the story itself.

Since I actually suck at the gameplaying part of playing games, I generally can’t go hard or survival mode when I play games where combat is a factor. Games for me are about fun, not about work, so I am not going to put in the time or effort to get good enough to play at those levels. Cyberpunk 2077 has the right balance in combat that I can play on a level just above normal and not get absolutely destroyed. There are also so many options in how to approach a fight, and part of my constant replaying of the game is trying out those options. While I tend to love a stealth approach with silenced weapons and headshots from afar, I have delved into using hacking almost exclusively and being a tank. I haven’t tried melee because I tend to be even worse at that than I am at regular combat. But each approach also has different aspects—different dials that I can tune to change the balance and therefore the approach and feel.

But even with really good gameplay, I can lose interest in a game once I understand its elements. It’s the role-playing and the setting that keep me around.

For me, RP is both about the RP elements of the mechanics—character customization and advancement—and interaction with the non-player characters—the characters with whom the player’s character interacts. The character customization in Cyberpunk 2077 is exemplary. Not only can you customize the look of the character (though this is a first person game, so that doesn’t have a lot of direct impact) but—as mentioned—the skills and approach of the character. There are different streams of advancement based on different attributes (like Body, Reflexes, Cool) and so you can build wildly different characters that force you to approach entire jobs differently. For example, the side entrance to access a site for a mission may need a level of Body or Technical to rip open a door or pick a lock, and if you don’t have that, you might need to go straight in. As mentioned, these also affect how you approach combat.

The interaction with the NPCs is both part of the RP but also part of the story. The game is built around a very central storyline, and while there are a voluminous number of side quests and encounters in which one can engage, it is all in service to completing the central storyline. I really like the conceit of the story: technology saves your character’s life in a key moment, but then sets about trying to kill them by overwriting their own identity with a saved identity construct of Johnny Silverhand (somewhere between a rock star and a terrorist). The game has a romance structure that one can pursue if interested, but just the friendship and camaraderie that one can build with companions creates excellent RP opportunities, allowing the player to craft a personality as much as a mechanical representation of their PC.

And the setting. Just. Wow. I really love how expansive and real Night City seems. I think that is the most important factor in my enjoyment of the game—but to be clear, it alone would not have been enough to hold my attention without the other components of the game. As much fun as it is to explore the wasteland with its small settlements in the Fallout series, Night City and its environs is endlessly fascinating even just to drive through. Side conversations between random NPCs, the interaction of different NPCs on the periphery, the buildings and urban framework—it all culminates in creating a fascinating and robust experience.

But I do have issues with the game. One of the big ones is how it approaches the police and the PC’s interaction with them. In my understanding, the genre of cyberpunk—at its core—is anti-authoritarian. It rails against big corporations and their capture of government. The police are a part of this, or at least should be in a good cyberpunk. Even in Blade Runner—which isn’t exactly cyberpunk but is definitely adjacent and informs so much of the aesthetic—the protagonist turns against his former employers, the police, as he learns more about the society around him. So having V—the PC—basically work as a contractor for the police is jarring. What is more, the police are shown to be little better than the gangs, yet they are sacrosanct, and any action against them brings quick and overwhelming repercussions.

I would imagine that this was a corporate choice; that CD Projekt which publishes Cyberpunk 2077 wanted to avoid friction with police and government and so made the police the good guys while simultaneously—in the story—highlighting their corruption and their corporate capture. I understand why the choice was made, I just disagree with it. Calling something ‘punk’ and then having the protagonist willingly and consistently support the state and corporate structure seems like a cheat to me.

And finally, my biggest problem with the game is that it is finite. There is an end, beyond which one cannot play. I don’t dig that. Have an ‘ending’ like in Fallout 4 where one can finish the main story, but then is left to finish whatever side missions or encounter they missed, or Ghost Recon Breakpoint where one can do that while also engaging in procedurally generated missions. Having a finite ending to the game means I don’t engage in the end of the story until I am confident I have done everything there is to do, or until I lose interest in forward movement. That reduces my immersion in the game, because what should be a ticking bomb is ignored for as long as I want to ignore it so I can engage with the rest of the game. That wouldn’t be necessary if the ending weren’t final—if one could continue to play one’s character in the setting after the main storyline completes. There’s a good narrative reason for making it finite, but that decision actually negatively impacts on the story that is basically a ticking bomb scenario.

Anyway, I love the game. There are more problems than those I mentioned, but there is also a lot more great about the game I have also not mentioned. If you like combat-oriented computer RP games, I think you will love Cyberpunk 2077. If you dig the Fallout 3, NV, 4 games, you will probably love this one. I give Cyberpunk 2077 4.75 tier 5 orange iconic weapons out of 5.